


In the Rearview

by BdrixHaettC



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, headcanon included, no death of the characters listed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-02-06 20:56:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1872189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BdrixHaettC/pseuds/BdrixHaettC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With every beat of their heart they leave Beacon Hill further and further behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: 2nd Chapter added with the headcanon for the drabble after a tumblr request :)

The lights reflect off the windshield in an almost hypnotic rhythm, and Jackson tries to track the pattern it makes in the interior of their stolen car but the strobe like effect is making him nauseous. 

It hasn’t been that long since he stopped heaving, and he is not keen to go through it again.

It hurts to breath.

Derek is in the drivers seat, equally as exhausted as Jackson is, but he refuses to pull over, not yet. Jackson doesn’t push.

They are running, and Derek is leaving behind the ruins of his life for a second time. Jackson feels sorry for him, it’s easier than having to think about his own loses. If he focuses on just breathing he can make it, at least to the next moment, and that is the only thing that matters. He made Derek a promise.

Derek says it’s healing, at last, but it’s going slow. It doesn’t feel like he’s healing at all but he’s not breathing blood anymore so Derek must be right.

He just wishes that the pressure over his heart would ease up. He doesn’t think it ever will.

They are both quiet as the car eats up the miles, leaving Beacon Hills further and further behind. 

Jackson is the only one left of his pack and he is thankful that Derek swore not to ever leave him behind. It is the only truth he still holds on to.

Everyone else is gone.

Jackson is silent in a way he’s never been before, but that is because he has run out of words. 

There is not much sound left in him.

He watches Derek through the dark.

Jackson doesn’t ask what happened to the others. Their fate is written on Derek’s face. 

He was there for some of it as well. It hurts to breath.

He turns his head to look through the window. They leave the lights behind and Jackson gets an uninterrupted view of the night sky peppered with stars. It’s beautiful, in a way the night sky over Beacon Hill never was, too close to human habitat as it was. 

He lets the engines vibrations lull him into a doze. 

He is about to fall asleep when he feels Derek’s hand cover one of his. Without opening his eyes he turns his hand until they are palm to palm.

As they speed into the black Jackson lets himself breath. It hurts, but not as much.

The future is uncertain. They are broken, but Derek has been here before. 

Maybe, maybe he knows enough to start over somewhere else.

The night swallows them whole.


	2. To set the Background

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes there is a lot more to the story that never gets written.

Better late than never :) Sorry for taking as long as it did.

‘In the Rearview’ is a drabble I wrote forever ago and the premise is based on a single image I had in my head and the feeling I associate to similar images. 

All of my art and (unpublished) stories have their origin in an image, or a scene, I see in my head and where I start wondering about the circumstances that cause this ‘moment’ for my character. 

The image and feeling in this case will be familiar to anyone that has been in the front passenger seat in the middle of the night on a cross-country car ride. 

Let me explain. It’s this: You are traveling with your family. During the day they are a source of stress because long hours in a confined space has a tendency to get everyone to fray on everyone’s nerves. But now they are all asleep. Except the driver, of course, and you. You love this part, maybe even more than the driver because you don’t have to focus on the road, or on the knowledge that you are responsible for everyone in the car getting to where you are going safely. The only one you are responsible for, in this moment, is yourself and here, right now, is what you imagine real peace feels like.

You are on a major highway so there is light, but the late hour and the route you are on means there is little traffic. The driver hasn’t bothered to turn on the radio since everyone fell asleep, or the volume is set so low it’s little more than background noise, it doesn’t matter. The only thing you hear are the wheels on the pavement when they go over the road partitions, this rhythmic thump-thump-thump that would be annoying if you were more awake, and the rare car that pases you by. You feel heavy, but the good kind of heavy, the kind that makes your body feel leaden, anchored to your seat. You are slumped against the car door, head resting against the window with somebody’s jacket as a pillow and even though your have been sitting for hours you are still comfortable, now more than ever.

It is an odd moment to live because there is a certain disconnect in how you perceive your environment, you are living in the moment but you experience it more as a spectator. It’s surreal but not disturbingly so. In fact you find it calming, the way the interior of the car brightens in interval with this orange-yellow light is semi-hypnotic, and the vibrations of the car going over the road is relaxing. Not enough to put you to sleep, but enough to have you halfway in la-la land. 

It’s nice. You want to speak to the driver because this little bubble you are in seems like the perfect time for some ‘real’ talk but that would require you to open your mouth and that is more effort than you want to exert.

The silence remains.

Anyway, the midnight rides were always my favorite part of any road trip pretty much because of the above. And it was that feeling I wanted to capture when I first thought of ‘In the Rearview’. 

I saw Jackson slumped down in the front passenger seat, half-asleep or half-conscious, with someone (anyone), driving somewhere (anywhere), and he had that disconnected perception of everything - the car, the road, the stars he could see in between the bright flare of street lights and that isolation you have when it’s just you, the driver and pretty much nothing else.

Then I put Derek as the driver, because why not? Then I started to think about why Derek and Jackson would be on the road by themselves going nowhere. Both characters have more than few ties to keep them in Beacon Hills in spite of their personal history there. Because of how I see their characters I could only imagine one possible scenario: all ties must have been severed. Completely. How? Everyone they cared about, had a connection with, are either dead or as good as dead.

In this ‘verse’ the war with the Hunters’ escalated beyond anyone’s worst nightmare. Chris Argent never got out under Gerard’s control and after Victoria’s death he didn’t much want to. Scott and Derek managed to intervene in time to prevent Gerard from gaining control of the Kanima. They hid Jackson away and with Deaton’s help they managed to work with Jackson to get him to shed the Kanima and complete his transformation into a werewolf. This was only possible because they were able to prevent him from bonding to anyone as his new Master. The Kanima’s most defining need is the necessity of a Master, without one they unravel pretty rapidly. When the creature was at it’s most desperate Derek and Scott managed to convince it that he could have an Alpha but only as a wolf. Bye, bye, Kanima. Hello, Wolf. 

Back in Beacon Hills everything has pretty much gone to hell in a handbasket. Gerard is furious at having been denied the control of the Kanima and under his control the Hunter’s forgo anything remotely resembling subterfuge - anyone connected to the werewolves are enemies. This include family members that did not know about the supernatural until cars full of nutjobs went after their kids with fully loaded automatic assault weapons. Collateral damage is the name of the game, and if Allison thought she was in control of anything that notion is quickly dispelled when Erica and Boyd are captured but then killed because ‘they outlived their usefulness’ when they refuse to give up the rest of the pack. It is a point of no return for Allison because when their bodies are found Scott finally loses his faith in her. She is a part of Them.

Like everything else in Teen Wolf world everything happens pretty quickly after that. Isaac disappears, nobody knows what happened. Jackson disappears as well in an exceedingly violent and public attack that left his car totaled and his parents dead although that was more due to the way his car was riddle with bullets rather than how it was forced of the road. 

Meanwhile Scott, Derek, and Stiles are desperately trying to find Isaac and Jackson to try to save them but failed to make any headway until Lydia gets involved and manage to reach Allison in a moment of human weakness. Desperate to salvage what remains of her soul she tries to free Isaac, the only one she knows the whereabout of, but he’s gone feral and ends up attacking her. Chris kills him as Isaac tries to make his escape. With Allison as good as dead (we don’t find out if she survived the attack, Chris behavior indicates she didn’t) Chris loses what little sanity he has left and blames Lydia for convincing Allison to go against her family. She finds herself kidnapped, hanging next to a wounded Jackson, and used as leverage against him. She doesn’t survive the experience.

Scott has forgone the no-killing rule as it’s killed or be killed and when Stiles is taken and his mother killed in a botched kidnap attempt, he becomes hellbent on wiping the Argent’s out.

In the end it’s Scott, Derek, Peter, and the Sheriff that go on the offensive in an attempt to rescue Stiles. Scott and the Sheriff go after Stiles, Derek and Peter try to kill as many hunter as they can and in the process they discover Jackson who is still alive, if barely. It also became obvious what Gerard has been trying to do: he’s been trying to get the Kanima back.

Gerard is finally killed. Stiles and the Sheriff die in the attempt to leave the compound, the Sheriff trying to protect Stiles to his final breath. Peter disappears in the melee. Derek manage to get Jackson out, but Scott returns to burn everything to the ground, grief-stricken and half insane. He never comes back out.

And this sets the scene for the drabble “In the Review”.


End file.
